The Noise of the World by Adriana Spadoni

Hour after hour, day after day, the train raced on, away from the smoke-wrapped slums of great cities, from great stretches of the earth torn open for men's greed, from the mills where little children slaved to accumulate the wealth of those whom they would never see. On and on, over the sun-soaked earth, across black, fat land; clean and empty desert; past lonely farms; little towns, isolated from the inimical immensity about them by their fenced gardens, their paved streets and electric lights. Above the prairie flatness, the gilded domes of their courthouses boomed pompously of law and order, and the tapering spires of churches pricked the blue sky to attract the attention of God.

Long after the rest of the car was asleep, Roger sat on the observation watching the distant lights break through the thick blackness, come near, recede, disappear. Something was so desperately wrong. There was so much land, so few owners. So much wealth, so many poor. Myriads lived and died, that a few might enjoy. That a few might own the earth, millions upon millions tore it apart, herded in unclean cities, built uncanny machines to speed the process of accumulation.